“Rooms by the Sea”

This piece of flash-fiction was inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting Rooms by the Sea. A link to the painting is included after the story.

Maybe he is napping. Maybe he’s shaving, getting ready for dinner. Maybe — no, stop.

Maybe, though. Go ahead, say it.

Maybe he jumped.

It’s not right to think of him hurting himself. It’s wrong to take satisfaction from that. The thought to banish is that six floors is just enough that when he hit the rocks of ancient lava, jagged and sharp and wet from five million years of tides, he felt it.

Did it feel like the words he loves to hurl? Did it hurt as much as the things he says after drinking all morning, all afternoon, through the night. How nice it must be to be sloshed like that all the time, to not remember anything you say, to have no idea how those words feel when they touch the skin and slice through, each a fresh wound.

The bed is made. Even from across the room, even from around the corner like this, it’s obvious he isn’t there. And the six o’clock light shines through the open door of the bathroom. No surprise that he’s not getting ready for dinner, for the reason we came, for our anniversary. No surprise at all.

The window is open. The roof above and the sun above that send a dark, angled shadow onto the wall. How proud he was of all this, of the top-floor suite with two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, a button to call the butler. The butler! And the balcony, looking onto all that black rock, not even a manicured garden beneath, because this is not an ocean view room, this is an ocean front room, the most expensive. The best. The kind that makes others look toward you at check-in and wonder how they ever got so wealthy. The kind you take a little golf cart to reach, a golf cart driven by staff, no less. By a hotel representative.

He said the room meant we had made it.

“Made it where?”

“Here. Just … here. Look at the view. Gorgeous.”

“And now what?”

It’s been two hours since we had that exchange.

“Don’t leave,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?” Which was, of course, the only question that mattered. My face still hurt. I still wore dark glasses. My body was still bruised. It would heal.

Yet he couldn’t answer. He fell silent. “All the booze is free,” he said.

“Good. Enjoy.” Did he?

Did he find the envelope with the letter from the attorney? I wonder. Is that why the window is open? I walk toward it.

I look down at the rocks below.

The view is gorgeous.

See the Hopper painting here:
https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/52939